Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Fact Families and Riddles!

Howdy Friends! Fantastic Tuesday today! We caught up on our literacy jobs on work board while reading groups worked on readers theaters and research in reading groups! Great way to start the day! In math we stretched our learning about 15 to include fact families! Thinking about number patterns and how they help make equations easy and fun... and fast! Speaking of fast, we had our first official "math fact race" today. That's right, Ms. W. dared any and every second grader to race through their math warm up sheet as fast as they can and try and beat her! In fairness... Ms. W. did pick the hardest sheet, and was the first to cross the finish line, a close second was Katie, followed by Marcus, Deter, Justin, Georgia and BG... just to name a few! Holy cow! What a blast! In fairness to the integrity of the competition, we must note that Ms. W actually made 2 errors, in her haste (though that's the whole point... fast facts), and we crowned Katie the winner! Well done everyone! We continued to read stories that celebrate the strength and courage of our African Americans and read about Harriet Tubman today. I must say, I do believe this may be the most insightful, thoughtful, empathetic group of second graders I've ever read to! February is a month to celebrate African American History, and celebrate we did, while learning about the struggle and character of those who supported the slave's escape! Niko had another fantastic math meeting and Madelene lead a wonderful morning meeting as well! We ended the day in writing workshop writing riddles about the characters we would dress up as for Willy Wonka Day tomorrow! Next it was fun to share our riddles and guess who will be arriving (in character) at school tomorrow as we prepare to celebrate Willy Wonka Day! Can't wait!!